Are Caustic Shrikes (And Corr in general) too strong?

[Xion350]

  Code:

 45322 | Depths:3 | Noticed a caustic shrike
 45322 | Depths:3 | Noticed a caustic shrike
 45324 | Depths:3 | Noticed a caustic shrike
 45324 | Depths:3 | Noticed a caustic shrike
 45328 | Depths:3 | Slain by a caustic shrike

Caustic shrikes are INSANELY strong. You can't outrun them, they have high melee damage to start with on top of corroding are resistant to both fire and ice, and rCorr doesn't even seem to help all that much. It would be one thing if they started low and ramped up the damage through corrosion. And this was in a game where I suvrived a Gank squad of Mara, Nikola and Polyphemus! (As an aside Caustic shrikes hit harder than all of them as well.)

Corrosion in general also seems to be way too strong, even with rCorr. In fact I'm not sure if I noticed any kind of survivability difference between with and without.

[Croases]

Orbs of fire are incredibly strong too, but nobody complains about their difficulty because they're in a late game area and justify liberal use of consumables and god abilities to kill or avoid them.

People don't die to caustic shrikes because they're unfairly strong, they die to caustic shrikes because they don't think shrikes are major threats that one should throw all their consumables at.

[Tiktacy]

I for one, really like caustic shrikes.

Harder late game is always good imo, its not like they are unfair to the player.

Also, what croass said.

[amaril]

Forgive me if I am being presumptuous, but I doubt you just 'walked up to' Mara/Nikola/Polyphemus and killed them (especially if you met them at a 'typical xl' for the shoals). You probably had to retreat first and then fight them from a more advantageous position, maybe with consumable use. Mara especially is very dangerous: if you did just fight them head-on in typical shoals terrain, you probably should have died.

Shrikes are dangerous because they look like 'normal' enemies and they kill you quickly. In this case they killed you in 4 turns, which to be fair is pretty extreme for any depths encounter. However, blink + teleport would probably have saved you (assuming you were in the middle of a huge open room with no nearby staircases), and potions (heal wounds, haste, agility, resistance) or any means of limiting the # of shrikes hitting you at once (aka summons) also probably would have worked.

That being said, I complained about hunger cobs after losing an 'invincible' character to them, so I feel your pain. Dying very quickly to a threat you had underestimated feels really unfair, but I would rather have real threats in the late game then the 'popcorn cleaning simulator' late game dcss might otherwise be.

[dynast]

Shrikes are dangerous because they are more rare than uniques, its normal to get caught by surprise and not know how to handle them because its not often that you fight them. After killing a thousand trolls you cant help but ask yourself what are those stupid birds heading your way.

[Hellmonk]

I very nearly died to a lone shrike the first time I saw one, and I assume that's the intended effect. I thought they were overpowered at first, too, but the real issue is just that they're disproportionately threatening compared to most depths encounters (because most depths encounters aren't very hard). While they resist fire and cold, they notably do not resist elec, poison, or negative energy, and their magic resistance is a (potentially) reasonable 80, so it's quite possible to have a character who's able to deal with a shrike pack unbuffed in favorable terrain. If you can't pull off such an encounter, burn some consumables to escape the fight and try to split the pack if you have to come back.

Edit: I also love shrikes now and I hope to see more of them in the future.

[lethediver]

I think the real problem is that the caustic shrike icon isnt intimidating enough for its power level. It should have burning red eyes, leave a trail of some kind of cloud behind it, and maybe stick out a bit past the usual icon size. Maybe it says some flavor text like "i am going to devour you and then come for your children"

Then players would know "oh shit this is going to be an actual fight"

[Hurkyl]

My first shrike encounter wasn't even a live one. I thought I was attacking a zombie harpy or somesuch.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

and maybe stick out a bit past the usual icon size.

some people play console, but sure; shrikes are said to be tiny, but there is no reason it cannot be giant-sized instead, like this:
e: I haven't tried but I'd guess that shrikes can't be netted very effectively, so their tininess must be there for humor, like death cobs or Monty Python's killer bunny.

[Croases]

They could use a more menacing name too, like Stymphalian birds.

You can then put them in Shoals, since it's ~flavorful~ to have them in our designated Greek-themed branch.

[Psieye]

I think the real problem is that the caustic shrike icon isnt intimidating enough for its power level. It should have burning red eyes, leave a trail of some kind of cloud behind it, and maybe stick out a bit past the usual icon size. Maybe it says some flavor text like "i am going to devour you and then come for your children"

Then players would know "oh shit this is going to be an actual fight"

Being able to read descriptions of unfamiliar monsters and derive danger level from the information given is a player skill. As long as DCSS remains in development, we will come across new monsters we don't have first hand experience of. If the combination of "looks extremely dangerous" (when other Depths mobs don't), "is very fast" and "has corrosive melee" don't make you scream and curse the devs, you haven't died enough in your DCSS career.

I'd been away from DCSS for a couple years, during which the caustic shrike got implemented. I resumed playing without reading forums or changelogs. When I first met this unfamiliar threat, I took one look at its description and I was already running for the stairs to isolate one. Then had to pop a tele upstairs as I experienced first hand how hard it hits. It's the sort of "this is serious" presence that was missing in Depths.

[KoboldLord]

I think the real problem is that the caustic shrike icon isnt intimidating enough for its power level. It should have burning red eyes, leave a trail of some kind of cloud behind it, and maybe stick out a bit past the usual icon size. Maybe it says some flavor text like "i am going to devour you and then come for your children"

Then players would know "oh shit this is going to be an actual fight"

As a general rule of thumb for games in general, and not just in Crawl, if your character is fighting hideous monsters in some blasted wasteland or filthy dungeon and you suddenly run across something completely adorable that moves to attack you, you should assume that this cute thing is one of the most dangerous things you are likely to find and react accordingly. Bunnies and birdies are bad news, even if it isn't clear exactly why.

[Tiktacy]

Caustic shrikes are normally "red colored" as far as danger level is concerned, for what its worth. FIrst time I saw them I was pretty careful.

[dowan]

"Looks extremely dangerous" is meaningless. I don't know how the game decides danger levels, but it's completely worthless information.

I think shrikes are a bit overpowered compared to what's around them (And depths is a hard place regardless of shrikes), but I don't think they're as poorly designed as OOFs. The game acts like fire and cold attacks are somehow better than physical attacks, so enemies get to be more resistant, but in practice since so many enemies have at least 1 pip of resistance, those characters tend to get extra screwed by these kinds of enemies.

People do occasionally complain about orbs of fire, it's just that they've been in the game forever, so people just kind of plan around them now. And as a resistance gate/damage type gate enemy, they seem unnecessarily limiting in a game that otherwise works with a plethora of strategies. But for OOFs, you just have to hit it hard with physical damage and have rF++. At least caustic shrikes aren't that limiting, although as I said, the fire and cold resistance seems completely unnecessary.

[crate]

it's pretty hard to be worse-designed than orbs of fire because they are almost certainly the worst-designed enemy in crawl

shrikes are good

[ydeve]

console reasons:

I think the real problem is that the caustic shrike icon isnt intimidating enough for its power level.

I laugh every time someone thinks that the icon of a monster is supposed to give information.

[Sprucery]

I laugh every time someone thinks that the icon of a monster is supposed to give information.

FR: under console, xv gives an ASCII art version of the monster icon in tiles.

[Sar]

DoomRL used to do something like that, it was cool.

[Hurkyl]

console reasons:

I think the real problem is that the caustic shrike icon isnt intimidating enough for its power level.

I laugh every time someone thinks that the icon of a monster is supposed to give information.

Yeah. I can't believe that people would ever think a graphical user interface would use graphics as a user interface!

[Reptisaurus]

Bring back hunger cobs!

And I agree we should have a monster called "bunny" that's black mamba fast and hits as hard as a juggernaut pack.

[Baldu3]

The main issues for me with those monsters are:
- the pack that sometimes spawns at the end of spider branch are wildy more powerful then anything else there
- otherwise they just have such big numbers in everything and no weaknesses, they feel like they belong in zot as an end game monster

[ydeve]

console reasons:

I think the real problem is that the caustic shrike icon isnt intimidating enough for its power level.

I laugh every time someone thinks that the icon of a monster is supposed to give information.

Yeah. I can't believe that people would ever think a graphical user interface would use graphics as a user interface!

An optional graphical interface in a genre that traditionally didn't have such and used other ways of conveying information?

Edit: Lets look at traditional roguelike graphics. Which looks more dangerous to you?

L
b
D
c
;

The tile just says there is such-and-such monster here. It gives no reliable information on anything else, especially how dangerous the monster is. If you are relying on it to do that then expect to die to something silly-looking.

[tabstorm]

No. They are fine.

[Hurkyl]

An optional graphical interface in a genre that traditionally didn't have such and used other ways of conveying information?

Edit: Lets look at traditional roguelike graphics. Which looks more dangerous to you?

AFAIK, we were discussing the tile interface. If you only have opinions about ascii interfaces, they're not really relevant.

[ydeve]

An optional graphical interface in a genre that traditionally didn't have such and used other ways of conveying information?

Edit: Lets look at traditional roguelike graphics. Which looks more dangerous to you?

AFAIK, we were discussing the tile interface. If you only have opinions about ascii interfaces, they're not really relevant.

Um, the post isn't about ascii interfaces as opposed to tiles.

Spoiler: show

The last line applies to all graphics interfaces.
And if you think that how information is traditionally presented in roguelikes does not impact design at all, I really don't know what to say.

Edit: changed heated sentence.

[milski]

An optional graphical interface in a genre that traditionally didn't have such and used other ways of conveying information?

Edit: Lets look at traditional roguelike graphics. Which looks more dangerous to you?

AFAIK, we were discussing the tile interface. If you only have opinions about ascii interfaces, they're not really relevant.

You're really good at ignoring the meaning behind people's posts. Next time you respond to a post, please actually address what the person wrote about.

Spoiler: show

The last line applies to all graphics interfaces.
And if you think that how information is traditionally presented in roguelikes does not impact design at all, I really don't know what to say.

Just because there is an ASCII interface that is very limited in how it can visually present threat doesn't mean that the console interface has to arbitrarily hold itself to the same restriction.

Hell, weren't most of the Elf sprites redesigned because they didn't properly convey monster threat and went against the palette used by other spellcasters? So despite your protests, the developers have previously redone tiles in order to better convey threat.

I don't really understand the point of mocking people requesting the console interface be better besides "lol tiles" condescension. How could shrikes having a more threatening sprite possibly be worse for the game?

[ydeve]

It doesn't make it worse to have a better sprite. But it's funny that people base so much on sprites because it really makes no sense to do so when you think about how games work.

If you tend to rely on the sprite to gauge monster threat levels you're going to get in trouble. The graphics are only a symbol for what the monster is, after all. Making it look like a cute bunny, a green ooze, or a flying monstrosity doesn't change how the monster will interact with you mechanics-wise. This applies to games in general, really. Even those that have had graphics to begin with. And even more so with one that traditionally didn't.

For example, a red dragon isn't really a red dragon. It's an enemy with a certain amount of AC/EV/HP/damage-per-attack that has a branded ranged attack (with the label "fire"), can travel over "lava" and "water" flavored tiles without penalty, takes extra damage from the "airstrike" spell, and sometimes drops armor that grants resistance to it's ranged attack's brand and vulnerability to another brand of attack. "Red Dragon" is a convenient handle or label for the monster. But it could just as easily be "Minmay's Animated Elf Pictures" and it would be the same monster.

So if you're looking at the sprites and say, "Oh, it's just animated pieces of paper, no way that could be threatening," then you can see how you will eventually run into trouble. I think players using graphics to gauge monster threat level is the fault of the player, not of the graphic. Because it's a habit that players can (to their benefit in many games) easily unlearn.

Spoiler: show

This is part of why I prefer ascii to tiles in general, because they force you to think more symbolically in the first place. You're not going to think "it's just a cute little bird" with console.

[adozu]

i believe the fact that those people that don't understand the value of good tiles prefer console is very telling.

[ontoclasm]

Tiles should try to convey as much useful information as possible, but that's not as easy as it sounds. Every piece of information you cram in makes it more cluttered and less readable, so you have to come to some sort of balance between "a metal bird" and "a big red DANGER sign that looks like it's super fast and deals acid damage and comes in packs." In addition, it can be hard to convey certain kinds of information visually; often the best you can do is pick some arbitrary motif and stick to it, e.g. "purple robe = wizard, green robe = priest." I mean, what makes a tile look "threatening"? Bright red? Big googly eyes? And what qualifies a monster as so threatening that it needs this marker? Ogres are very scary when they first show up, and meaningless fodder just a few floors later. So... do I draw them bright-red-with-googly-eyes, or not?

Anyway, I took a shot at redoing their tile but for the above reasons I dunno if I'd call it "more threatening." Maybe we'll use it for something else instead; Crawl needs more super-dangerous murder birds.

[Sar]

I like the shape of this one more, but maybe make it a bit more metallic?

[ion_frigate]

For the record: console glyphs can most definitely give information about a monster's danger level. Crawl, for example, tends to have the "dangerous" variant of a monster have a lighter-colored glyph: orc warrior -> orc knight, lich -> ancient lich, centaur/orc -> centaur warrior/orc warrior, yaktaur -> yaktaur captain, naga mage -> greater naga, etc. NetHack has its infamous "purple L's" (master- and arch-liches) because purple is usually reserved for high-tier monsters. ADOM uses purple to denote monsters with corrupting attacks. In Brogue, capital letters are much more dangerous on average than lower case ones. Obviously these rules are never absolute (but neither is a "dangerous" looking tile).

I'm pointing this out because for once the console people were irritating me more than the tiles people. Console players do rely on non-text cues like color, and they can certainly be fooled by them from time to time.

[Hurkyl]

And we should give credit to the crawl team too -- I think they've done a much better job with tiles (both in support from the game and the actual artwork) than other games I've played with ascii vs graphical tile options.

[dpeg]

I'm pointing this out because for once the console people were irritating me more than the tiles people.

No kidding.

Obligatory console disclaimer: it should be possible to use unicode diacritics on letters (and by "use", I include terminals and online play). That'd be such a big boost to the console interface.

[wizzzargh]

Anyway, I took a shot at redoing their tile but for the above reasons I dunno if I'd call it "more threatening." Maybe we'll use it for something else instead; Crawl needs more super-dangerous murder birds.

Those are really nice looking bird sprites but yeah, they don't really convey 'hella tough acid bird' to me. Maybe if there was more acid dripping and splashing about, enough to take one look at the poor acid-soaked bird and think 'Dang, British Petroleum at it again.'

For what its worth, I think maybe instead of bright-red-with-googly eyes, maybe shrikes could be rusty or corroded looking kinda like Iron Giants, rather than shiny blueish. If horror games and tetanus have taught me anything, rusty and corroded=bad news.

[ydeve]

FWIW, what stands out (to me at least) about the shrike console glyph is how incredibly nonthreatening it looked. When you see a "very dangerous" "butterfly," it makes you stop to read the monster description.

[TeshiAlair]

FWIW, what stands out (to me at least) about the shrike console glyph is how incredibly nonthreatening it looked. When you see a "very dangerous" "butterfly," it makes you stop to read the monster description.

Or you think lol butterfly and die because I am seriously an impressively incompetent player given how long I've been playing

[ydeve]

FWIW, what stands out (to me at least) about the shrike console glyph is how incredibly nonthreatening it looked. When you see a "very dangerous" "butterfly," it makes you stop to read the monster description.

Or you think lol butterfly and die because I am seriously an impressively incompetent player given how long I've been playing

If you see a monster that says it's "extremely dangerous" and think "lol butterfly" then you deserve to die.

Edit: obviously it's not a butterfly at all

[crate]

dude have you ever tried to actually kill a crawl butterfly? if they had attacks they would be terrifying

[duvessa]

The "extremely dangerous" designation is virtually always wrong, so I don't think players should be faulted for ignoring it.

[Xion350]

I will say that my last run in with Caustic Shrikes was much less game ending but I had absurd shield and armor skill with a GDA and Large shield.

[lethediver]

Tiles should try to convey as much useful information as possible, but that's not as easy as it sounds. Every piece of information you cram in makes it more cluttered and less readable, so you have to come to some sort of balance between "a metal bird" and "a big red DANGER sign that looks like it's super fast and deals acid damage and comes in packs." In addition, it can be hard to convey certain kinds of information visually; often the best you can do is pick some arbitrary motif and stick to it, e.g. "purple robe = wizard, green robe = priest." I mean, what makes a tile look "threatening"? Bright red? Big googly eyes? And what qualifies a monster as so threatening that it needs this marker? Ogres are very scary when they first show up, and meaningless fodder just a few floors later. So... do I draw them bright-red-with-googly-eyes, or not?

Anyway, I took a shot at redoing their tile but for the above reasons I dunno if I'd call it "more threatening." Maybe we'll use it for something else instead; Crawl needs more super-dangerous murder birds.

Fixed version:

[dowan]

But now it just looks like that harmless bird is guarding a huge hoard of multicolored treasure! Surely it must be killed, and easily so!

I do think removing their rF and rC would be good. Most characters wouldn't notice the difference at all, but it would mean they're not extra hard against some characters who rely on those damage types. A character whose best offensive option is bolt of fire can still run away from fire giants, these things are designed to be pretty hard to run away from.

[duvessa]

lethediver jests, but making shrike's acid aura really bright (like, 0x00FF00 bright) would go a long way towards making them look more dangerous. Crawl's tiles often use bright or highly saturated colours to signify "high-level" monsters. See orb of fire, ancient lich, Ilsuiw, titan...

(This is why games need art directors)